I am trying to replicate the DHS numbers for maternal mortality rate in Indonesia for 2012. I am following the instructions given in the http://dhsprogram.com/pubs/pdf/DHSG1/Guide_to_DHS_Statistics _29Oct2012_DHSG1.pdf However, I am not able to get the same number of maternal deaths by age groups. To calculate the age groups I am using the sister's age at death, while to calculate the period of death I am using the difference between the date of death and date of interview, truncating it to a difference of 60 (given the dates CMC format). Although the total is similar, it should be the same and the age groups distribution as well differs greatly.

Using Nepal DHS 2006, how to replicate table 9.2? What variables should we be using to calculate maternal mortality since i can not see the variables that DHS guide has mentioned under adult and maternal mortality section.

Check out the "MM" variables for the maternal mortality calculations. These include all the information on the siblings of women interviewed (from which the maternal mortality rates are computed), their birth dates (MM4), whether they are alive (MM2), age at death (MM7), wether their death coincided with a pregnancy (MM9/10). From their you should be able to follow the DHS Guide to Statistics to calculate the rates.

Now I want to calculate the confidence interval. What formula shall I use? Or is there any reference you can point out? I found Hanley, J. A., Hagen, C. A., & Shiferaw, T. (1996). However, this paper is for the direct method.
Thanks for your help.

I have an extra question. I am now trying to reproduce the calculations of maternal mortality in Indonesia for 2007. Using the same code, that give me the same numbers as the report in 2012, I get very different results. This after adjusting some changes in the coding of some variables like mm9_.

Is it possible that the method for calculating maternal mortality changed from 2007 to 2012?
I also noticed the sample is smaller and that the proportion of respondents 15-19 is very small compared to other age ranges. Also, when compared to 2012 is less evenly distributed. Could this having an impact in the results I am finding? Was there an extra adjustment on the weights in 2007?

Below I'm giving my code for calculating the numerators and denominators for the maternal mortality rates (not the ratios) for All women samples. This code usually matches the counts given in the reports exactly, however, for Indonesia 2012 the denominators do not match exactly, although the differences are small - I think this is probably because the maternal mortality modules dates and ages were re-imputed since the tabulations for the report were produced. The program below defaults to a 7 year period, but to produce estimates for a five year period, just change the local variable for the period to be 60 (5 years) instead of 84 (7 years):

The problem you are having is probably that the 2012 Indonesia survey was an All Women sample while the 2007 Indonesia survey was an Ever-Married Women sample. When analyzing ever-married women samples you need to make assumptions about the never-married women. For example in fertility analysis in surveys using ever-married women samples we assume that never-married women had no children. For maternal mortality where we analyze siblings of respondents we would have to make assumptions about the age and survival status of siblings of never-married women. There are two obvious choices we could make: 1) The simplest - just analyse the siblings of the ever-married women (which is presumably what you have tried), 2) Assume that the distribution of the ages and survival statuses of the siblings of never-married women is the same as that for the ever-married women of the same age, and just apply the all women factors to the siblings data. Unfortunately neither of these assumptions is very good. The first is probably biased as it is excluding siblings of never-married women and never-married women tend to be younger, thus the siblings are biased toward older ages. The second is probably biased as it assumes that ages and survival status of the siblings of never-married women of a certain age is the same as that of ever-married women of the same age, and it seems unlikely that this is true, e.g. less educated women women may marry younger, may have more siblings, and more of them may die at younger ages.

To use the second option using the all women factors, you can just multiply the weight by the all women factor. In other words, replace:

gen wt = v005/1000000

with

gen wt = (v005/1000000)*(awfactt/100)

I tried to reproduce the maternal mortality tables in the report with the second option and I come close to what is shown in the report. When I looked further at our archives I found a re-run version of the tables which I am able to match with the current dataset. I checked for an explanation and do not find one, but it appears that the maternal mortality in the dataset or the maternal mortality tabulation program were modified and the tables in the report do not match what is produced with the current version of the dataset.

Hi Trevor,
Thanks a lot for your reply and your help. All is very clear now. Once I use the awfactt weight I obtain the exact same results as the report in 2007. Also, using the IDIR62FL.DTA I get the exact same results for 2012. Although the reports seem to have different reference periods, both were calculated using a 5 years period.

Hi Trevor,
Thanks a lot for your reply and your help. All is very clear now. Once I use the awfactt weight I obtain the exact same results as the report in 2007. Also, using the IDIR62FL.DTA I get the exact same results for 2012. Although the reports seem to have different reference periods, both were calculated using a 5 years period.

i am a student of M.Phil iips mumbai. i am working on maternal and child mortality in nigeria. i want to calculate maternal mortality rate and ratio of nigera DHS 2013 data. i have found problem with calculating maternal mortality rate and ratio of nigeria DHS data 2013 through stata.

sir,
I rajeev kumar a student of M.phil, I am working on maternal mortality in nigeria using DHS data 2013. I found some problem for calculating Age Adjusted General Fertility Rate and also facing Problem to calculatin Age Adjusted mortality rate. sir please send me do file for calculation of Age Adjusted General Fertility Rate and Age Adjusted mortality rate.

I rajeev kumar a student M.Phil. I have facing problem in calculating Age Adjusted General Fertility rate and Age Adjusted mortality rate. please help me how to calculate Age Adjusted General Fertility rate and Age Adjusted mortality rate using DHS-2013 data in nigeria. please send me do file for age adjusted general fertility rate and age adjusted mortality rate using stata.

We do not have a do file for calculating the maternal mortality ratios. The Guide to DHS Statistics is a good reference to how to compute the maternal mortality ratio, and the attached spreadsheet provides an example of how the age standardization works (column F comes from table 3.1 in most reports).

I am using IDHS in 2012 to calculate the maternal mortality rate in Indonesia. I've changed the file from wide to long data. However, the number of maternal deaths that I got is 372 while in the Indonesia Demographic Health Survey is 92 (Table 15.4). How could be it different?

Please I would like to have a few clarification to help me with my analysis. I want to calculate the women persons years from the 2008 and 2013 NDHS data set. Please How do I go about that?

I have an additional question...I developed a complex sample analysis plan as i watched on the vidoes
/PLAN FILE='C:\Users\....................\Complex Plan for MM.csaplan'
/PLANVARS ANALYSISWEIGHT=WGT
/SRSESTIMATOR TYPE=WR
/PRINT PLAN
/DESIGN STRATA=V022 CLUSTER=V021
/ESTIMATOR TYPE=WR.
However, I am not sure if the Generalized linear module under the Complex plan is as robust as the GLM under the mixed model. The core of my real analysis is the random/mixed model.

So I would like to ask if I can use the mixed model model and then fix the newly weight variable generated with WGT/1000000 as the weight offset value and still get a reasonable result.

I don't use GLM and I have never tried using it under the Complex Survey plan, but in general, if you don't take into account the clustered sampling and stratification, and you basically treat the survey as a simple random sample then any confidence intervals will generally be too narrow and any significance tests will over estimate the significance.

Thank you so much for the codes again. It has really helped my analysis. I would like to confirm though, the total maternal death (md) generated for the period of interest summed up to 104. Is that right? How is the 398 from the NHS 2008 report calculated?

Thank you so much for the codes again. It has really helped my analysis. I would like to confirm though, the total maternal death (md) generated for the period of interest summed up to 104 unweighted and 110 weighted counts. Is that right? How is the 398 from the NDHS 2008 report calculated?

I have a question again. I am using IDHS in 2012 to calculate the maternal mortality rate in Indonesia. I've changed the women data set into sibling's record, but I want to know which one is the respondent and which one is the siblings in the long dataset. After reshaping, however, only the respondent has the unique number and as I reshaped the data into long format, the respondent shared the same id number with her siblings. And I want to know how many the respondents have 1, 2, or more siblings?, does each sibling also have unique id number to differ them from the respondent?. I've read about the egen command in many literature, but I need the unique number of the siblings.
many thanks

The respondent is not included in the sibling history. The sibling history includes all siblings except for the respondent. The unique number for the sibling is given by MMIDX in conjunction with CASEID.

I found no guide on how to calculate confidence interval in MMR in Guide to DHS statistics. However, I've read the other papers using sisterhood method as well as the IDHS 2012.
It is said that Jackknife repeated replication method is used for variance estimation of more complex statistics such as fertility and mortality rates.
How can I calculate the Standard Error in Maternal Mortality Ratio using the Jackknife repeated replication method?
I hope anyone can help me since I didn't find the guide to calculate in Stata.

hi, i want to calculate maternal mortality in Indonesia by province (smaller region). Can i use just the ratio of dataset to count the maternal mortality rate by province or is there any weight to count this number? thank you

Hi Resty and Dimas, This survey does not have a sufficient number of cases of maternal deaths to produce an estimate of maternal mortality for any areas other than for a national estimate. The sample is too small for provincial estimates of the relatively rare event of maternal mortality. We do not have code in Stata for calculating the maternal mortality ratios using the Jackknife repeated replication method.

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